


Live Unlike Before

by thepinupchemist



Series: Hideaway 'Verse [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Gen, Growing Up, Kid Fic, M/M, Parent Castiel, Parent Dean, Parenthood, discussion of past rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 02:23:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1711529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepinupchemist/pseuds/thepinupchemist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After an explosive argument between Dean and his daughter, Castiel decides that it's important for Mary Winchester-Novak to know the entire story of her origins and her omega father's past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Live Unlike Before

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for discussion of like everything in IYH

**Soundtrack: The Curse – Agnes Obel**

**_Live Unlike Before_ **

When Mary flips her backpack off of her shoulders and slams it onto the ground, Dean knows that it won’t be a pleasant evening. In general, Mary’s good-tempered and reasonable, but she’s also inherited Dean’s propensity to make quick leaps to anger when she feels she’s been wronged. She plops down into one of the kitchen chairs, arms folded over her chest and glowering. Hoping to quell the shitstorm before it begins, Dean greets, “Hey, sweetheart. I just made a fresh pot a’ coffee. You want a cup?”

Mary shrugs.

The girl loves her coffee, so Dean ends up feeling even more disconcerted than before. He pours her a coffee and doses it with half and half the way she likes, sliding it to her before he sits down with her, a chair between them so she doesn’t feel crowded.

“What’s goin’ on?” he asks. His coffee singes his tongue when he takes his first sip, and he has to bite the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t swear and shatter the tentative trust that teenagers have when it comes to talking to their parents about crap. Mary may only be fourteen, but she’s sure as shit old enough to have opinions. Dean hates admitting that. He also hates thinking about how she’s already presented, how he sometimes sees the way her eyes light up when somebody smells particularly nice to her.

Cas always tells him not to be so overbearing, but it’s damn hard not to worry so much when shit involves your pup. Even now he’d rather gather her up in his arms and hug the bejeezus out of her until the sad shit goes away, but she’s not a child anymore and hugs don’t solve her problems like they did when she was littler.

“Julia isn’t talking to me,” she mutters, eyes lowered to the floor. She ignores her coffee.

Aw, crap. When Mary fights with her best friend, that’s when her mood is ugliest. Typically they make up within the week, but that isn’t going to rescue the evening from one grumpy teenager having a fit.

“Well, that fuckin’ sucks,” Dean settles on saying, “You wanna talk about what happened?”

“It’s stupid,” Mary says.

“That’s all right,” he replies, “Obviously it matters to you, so that counts as pretty not-stupid in my book.”

That almost teases a lighter expression out of her, but as soon as she’s almost smiling, her face falls once again. Mary sighs and futzes with her coffee mug. Seems to Dean like she wants to talk about it but can’t decide if Dean should be the one to get the earful or not. If she deems him unworthy, Cas’ll have a helluva time when he gets back from the clinic tonight.

On the end of an exhale, Mary says, “So Julia likes this guy, right? Today she decided to tell him that she’s into him, and he says he’s not interested. Obviously he’s stupid because Julia’s awesome, so I try to cheer her up, but then she gets pissed _at me_ ‘cause I called him a dumb omega bitch. What the hell, right?”

Dean’s gut twists up into knots and all at once he thinks that he might vomit everywhere. His palms and underarms start to sweat, and the words _dumb omega bitch_ echo in his skull in Mary’s voice, over and over.

“Dad?” she says.

Dean swallows the lump in his throat and shoves the old feelings of anxiety deep, deep down before he says, “Sweetheart, you really shouldn’t use that word. Julia is an omega too, remember?”

“Ugh,” Mary says, “Why are you taking her side? It’s just a stupid word. It doesn’t mean anything.”

His tongue is heavy in his dry mouth. Dean tears through his brain for the right thing to say in this situation, but he doesn’t know. He never thought that he’d get into this crap with his daughter, but of course he would. Of course this shit would touch his family, because that’s how raising pups works. They always fucking surprise you, and definitely not always in the good way.

“Mary,” says Dean, trying to keep his voice level, though he feels it quake with the rest of his body, “The term ‘omega bitch’ has a lot of weight for omegas. It might not feel important to you, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not important at all. I think you need to tell Julia that you’re sorry, and I – damn it. Please, kiddo, just don’t talk like that.”

“Oh, _whatever_ ,” Mary says, jerking out of her chair and onto her feet, “What do you know, anyway? Maybe you’re just an oversensitive omega bitch too.”

Dean’s brows go straight up into his hair and the ill feeling throughout his body coils and tightens into something new, raw anger bright and vicious, the kind of fury he can’t remember feeling since before Mary even hit the terrible twos. Even though Mary already wears guilt on her face, he draws the fucking line at this.

“You. You will _never_ speak to me like that in this home. _Ever_ ,” he snaps, voice growing ever-louder with each syllable, “That is absolutely fucking unacceptable. You can kiss your weekend in the city goodbye, because you are grounded.”

“What?” Mary gapes, “You’ve never grounded me before!”

“Yeah, well, I’m grounding you now,” he seethes.

“This isn’t fair,” Mary says. Her hands clench into fists at her sides.

Dean can’t help the bitter laugh that rips from his lungs at that. He says, “Fair, Mary? You wanna talk about _fair_? You can talk to me about shit being fair when you have walked a goddamn mile in the shoes of an omega. And honey, you’re in my house, and here you will follow my rules. This time you’re grounded, but the next time I hear you talking like that, so help me God, that will be the last time you are ever allowed in this home. _Room. Now_.”

Mary bursts into tears and Dean can’t even feel guilty about it. He watches her flee to her bedroom and thinks that it’s all over. But she stops and looks over at him, red-faced. She shouts, “It’s not even your house! This house is belongs to _alpha dad_.”

“Make that two months,” he growls back, and Mary lets out another dry sob before she slams her door with force enough to shake the house.

As soon as she’s gone, Dean’s righteous anger ebbs away, leaving only grief and anxiety in its wake. All at once he’s in a place that he hasn’t been to in a long time. He’s back at Alastair’s compound, and the phrase _omega bitch_ whirls around his head like a moon around a planet. He can’t breathe and he thinks he might be crying – he knows he’s on the floor when a thud fills the emptiness Mary left behind. He curls up, spine pressed against the back of the couch, and tries to breathe the way that Benny taught him to all those years ago, whenever Dean felt a panic coming on.

It doesn’t help. He’s already too far gone, revisiting places that haven’t crossed his mind in months at least, maybe even years.

“Daddy?” he hears.

The word is enough to get him to look up, and he sees his sons looking back at him.

Jack throws his skinny arms around Dean the moment that their eyes meet and says into Dean’s neck, “Don’t be sad, daddy. I love you.”

“Love you too,” he says, voice rough. Another wave of hot, humiliating tears spill out of his eyes and his chest rattles with the effort to breathe.

“Are you okay?” asks Ben, more timidly than he typically does.

“No,” Dean answers before he can stop himself, “but I’ll get there, okay? Just – just don’t.”

What happens next is a blur. He knows he’s crying and that Jack is petting his head and telling him that whatever it is will be better, just like Dean tells Jack when he’s sad. Distantly, he hears Ben’s frantic voice speaking to somebody on the phone, and then silence, nothing beyond his own heaving, frantic breaths and pained effort not to weep.

Some sprawling, tangled amount of time later, he hears a door slam and smells something familiar, something _home_. Warm hands smooth over Dean’s arms before cupping his face. It’s Cas, Cas is home, his alpha. Immediate comfort enfolds him but with that comes a new wave of tears.

“What the hell happened?” asks Cas. He pulls Dean onto his feet and rubs his back in circles.

“I don’t – damn it – I just. Fuck. Me n’ Mary got into a fight.”

“Boys,” Cas says, looking behind them, though his hand doesn’t stop moving, “Could one of you start some hot water so we can make dad some tea?”

Dean expects an argument, but instead there’s silence and the sound of the kids shuffling to obey. Cas tightens his hold on Dean’s shoulders and walks him to their bedroom. He guides Dean to sit down on the edge of the mattress and cups his face in both hands, lips brushing against his forehead.

“What did you and Mary fight about?” Cas asks, “You haven’t had an attack in years.”

“I know,” he says weakly. He tries not to feel like he’s failed his pups, but here he is in his bedroom, a wreck that was so out of his mind that he couldn’t acknowledge his own damn offspring.

“Do not think what you are thinking, Dean Winchester,” Cas says, an edge to his voice, “Tell me what happened.”

Dean runs his hands back through his hair and smears them over his stinging eyes. He blows all the air out of his lungs before he answers, “She came home upset ‘cause Julia wasn’t talkin’ to her. I ask what happened, and it turns out that Julia’s pissed ‘cause Mary called some kid a _dumb omega bitch_.”

An intake of breath from Cas punctuates the end of Dean’s explanation. His alpha gathers Dean up in his arms and rubs his back again, pressing in close so that Dean can scent and be comforted. Another two kisses to the top of Dean’s head later, Cas straightens back out and says, “After I get your tea – I’ll make the kind you actually like, don’t worry – I’m going to sit down and talk with her, okay? You just rest.”

Dean is too bone-tired and anxious to do anything but listen, and he tolerates it when Cas brings him a cup of steamy, earthy-smelling tea with the boys on his heels. Jack climbs up onto the bed and tucks himself under Dean’s arm. He wraps his arms around Dean’s middle, but he doesn’t say anything, just noses at Dean’s shirt and holds him close. Ben, too, hoists himself up onto the mattress, but he sits on Cas’ side of the bed and just keeps close, watching over Dean the way a protective alpha would.

He tries to breathe again, drink the tea, and tell himself that he will be okay, but a poisonous kernel of doubt sprouts from his innards, turning Dean’s insides black with the thorns of old fears.

**X**

When Castiel raps his hand against his daughter’s bedroom door, he’s greeted in return with a furious, tear-garbled, “ _GO AWAY_.”

“It’s alpha dad,” he says back, “Could I please come in?”

Silence rolls out between them, and for a moment, Castiel thinks that Mary genuinely wants him to go away. But then, the lock clicks, and the door opens just a crack. Even through that small sliver of space, Castiel can see that Mary’s face is red with tears. She states, “You’re home early.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Did omega dad call you?”

“No,” Cas replies, “Ben called me.”

Mary opens the door a little more and asks, “Ben? Why?”

“Your father is very upset,” Castiel hedges. He isn’t sure how much Mary saw before she slammed the door on Dean.

“Oh, awesome, you’re here to lecture me too,” she snips, and rolls her eyes.

“Actually,” Castiel says, and stops her before she can close the door, “I wanted to talk to you about something that your father and I knew we’d need to talk to you about someday. We’ve been waiting until you were old enough to discuss the situation, and I think you’re certainly old enough now.”

At last Mary lets the door creak all the way ajar, and Cas steps into her bedroom. It’s a wreck – more than usual. Her things are strewn all over the floor , belongings thrown haphazardly out of their place and scattered like bodies on a battlefield. He swallows and asks, “What happened in here?”

“I got angry,” Mary mutters.

Cas doesn’t respond to that, just shifts some things from her carpet to the side, and lowers himself down on the floor, back against the side of Mary’s bed. He pats the space beside him, and, after a second of consideration, Mary joins him.

“You know I’m not your biological alpha,” he starts, “and you know that that doesn’t matter to me, and that you’re my daughter regardless of genetics. There’s a story about that. Omega dad and I agreed that we should never lie to you but we have censored certain incidents because we wanted to wait to discuss these things until you were emotionally mature enough.”

“You met daddy when he was pregnant with me. He was running away,” Mary says, “That’s what you said.”

“And that’s true,” Castiel replies. His heart hangs heavy in his chest with each word. There is no way to tell this tale without Mary feeling hurt and pain, and there is no way to reveal the horrible truth of Dean’s past without the terror. Cas massages a hand against his temple and wills himself to be calm, if only for Mary’s sake.

“Dad?” she says, and the anger has drained from her voice.

Castiel steels himself with a breath and begins the retelling with, “The night I met your father, I was driving home with groceries. I smelled something very strange, and there he was.”

“I know that,” Mary says, petulant again, “You told me you picked him up off the side of the road, in the rain. I know this story.”

“Mary,” says Castiel. His voice hardens, “You know the skeleton of this story and that is all that you know, because omega dad was and is afraid of what will happen when you know everything.”

“What, that he got knocked up by some rando and ran off so Grandpa John wouldn’t find out?”

Cas eyes her. He asks, “Is that what he told you?”

Mary’s brows pinch and she says, “…No. I guess – I just assumed.”

“Hm. He did run from Grandpa John, but the reason that he ran from home was because he had gone out at the very end of his heat. He was cornered by some alphas and they forced themselves on him.”

Mary pales, and she whimpers. The sound spears Castiel right through the heart, and the scent of her increased distress sends the alpha instinct to protect beating through his veins. He ends up resting an arm over her shoulder and pulling her in closer, hoping that the close proximity of his scent and warmth will do something to steady the shock of the blow that is learning about her omega father’s past.

“When your father came home later that night, Grandpa John told him that if he’d only listened when he was told that he shouldn’t go out, then what happened to him might not have occurred,” Castiel goes on, “He was twenty one when this happened. I met omega dad when he was twenty eight.”

“Oh. What about Uncle Sam?” she asks.

“Your uncle was young at the time,” Cas says, “He told your father that he should have listened to Grandpa John, and that was why omega dad decided to leave home.”

“I didn’t know that daddy got hurt,” she says. Her voice is so small that Castiel can’t help but pull her in more.

He says, “If you want me to stop telling this story, I can stop.”

“No,” Mary says, “I wanna know what happened to my dad.”

Castiel chews on his lip and continues, “Omega dad hitchhiked from Kansas to Colorado. He was in Colorado Springs when he met a man named Alastair. He told omega dad that he had a couch your dad could sleep on, but as soon as they walked outside, Alastair had men drug your father and put him in the back of a van. He doesn’t remember much about that time, but we do know that somewhere in that space was when they inserted a hormone chip in his leg.”

“A _what_?” Mary interrupts, aghast, “You don’t mean those thingies that they have sometimes on like, cop shows, do you?”

“I do mean the ‘thingies’ that are sometimes on cop shows, yes,” Castiel says, the words like acid on his tongue.

“B-But wouldn’t that mean –?” Mary cuts herself off, unable to say the words. He knows she knows that Dean hates procedural cop shows. He also knows that she knows from those same shows exactly what omega trafficking is and that it remains to this day an underground issue with its claws rooted firmly United States.

Castiel nods, doesn’t say anything, but Mary’s eyes still water and two tears streak down her cheeks.

“I will spare you the gory details,” Castiel says, and his voice cracks. He didn’t realize how much emotion still rides on what happened to his omega, his perfect, loudmouthed, brash Dean. But he still feels as though he may break into a million pieces just thinking of what was done to his mate, and the sensation sends quiet tears of his own rolling over his face.

“Don’t cry, daddy,” Mary says, her own voice wobbling.

“I’m trying, sweetheart,” Castiel says, “Details…set aside, I did meet your father on the side of the road when it was raining, and he was running away. When your father got in my car, he didn’t have any clothes and he was much, much too skinny for a pregnant omega. He was badly hurt, and he didn’t talk to me at all at first. Not a word. While he was in that – terrible place, he was always called ‘an omega bitch.’ Regardless of omega dad’s experience, you shouldn’t use those words. They’re engrained in people in a very bad way, and the damage words like that do is far more than hurt feelings.”

Mary hiccups. Her tears escalate from quiet to shuddering sobs that make her whole body shake. She says, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll never say it again.”

“It’s okay,” Castiel reassures her. He loops his other arm around her and pulls her in for a tighter hug, burying his nose in her hair for a tiny sliver of comfort among the alarms of _pup in distress_ ringing in his ears. He repeats, “It’s okay,” and then says, “but you don’t need to tell me that you’re sorry. I think you need to go tell omega dad.”

Those words have Mary ripping herself out of Castiel’s arms and flinging herself out the door. He leaps up and follows, just close enough behind her to watch as she throws her arms around Dean’s neck, sobs louder than before, and her chant of, “I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry.”

“Boys,” Castiel says lowly, “Omega dad and I need to talk to your sister. Why don’t you go play video games downstairs?”

Ben and Jack both look reluctant to leave Dean behind, but as soon as Castiel transitions from making a request to giving them the ‘alpha daddy stare’ (so coined by Dean), they flee from the room obediently. Castiel closes the door as soon as his sons leave. He doesn’t lock it.

Dean meets Cas’ eyes over where Mary is crying in a heap against him, question in expression.

“I told her,” Castiel says, “the truth.”

“Oh,” is all that Dean can manage in response to this.

“I thought it would help her understand why you were so angry,” supplies Cas.

Dean smooths a palm over Mary’s back and says, “I wasn’t mad at you, sweetheart, not really. I was mad at those words.”

And then Mary bursts, “Why didn’t you tell me that a monster made me? You – you got taken away, _kidnapped_ , and they – you had to do _things_ for them and – one of those awful people…one of them _made me_. How can you even look at me?”

“Whoa,” Dean says, and he hauls Mary up into a cuddle. He kisses her on the top of her head and says, “Mary, no, never think that, okay? The only good thing that hellhole gave me was you, and I don’t give half a shit about your biological alpha father. You saved my life, you hear me? I was ready to give up, but when you came along, you gave me a reason to keep on living, to fight for you and to fight for me. I don’t want you to think for a second that ‘cause you came along because of a bad place that it changes anything. You’re my baby girl, and you’re alpha daddy’s baby girl, and there’s nothin’ that’s gonna change that, not ever.”

Castiel takes that moment to join them. He rests a hand on Mary’s shoulder and says, “Sometimes, family isn’t blood. Family means the people that love you and take care of you, and we’ll never stop being that for you.”

Dean strokes his fingers through Mary’s honey-colored hair and says, “For a long, long time I didn’t know the right way to take care of myself, but when you came along, I knew I had to do better. And the first time I saw you I just thought that – that there was no possible way I could love anybody more, even though you were just a wrinkly little pink thing, pissed as hell and crying up a storm.”

Mary sniffs and laughs.

“I’m so sorry, daddy,” she whispers.

“S’all right,” Dean says, “I forgive you. You should probably say sorry to Julia too, though.”

“What if she doesn’t wanna be friends anymore?”

“Kiddo, you two have been best friends since what, first grade? You’ll be fine,” he says. Just at the end of his sentence, Dean’s stomach makes an angry gurgling noise. Mary laughs a little at the sound, and Castiel smiles.

“I think that might mean that it’s time for supper,” Cas says, “Are you okay, Mary?”

Mary nods, and shifts her attention to Dean, “I’m okay. Um…are you okay too, daddy?”

“Sweetheart,” Dean says, and pulls their daughter in for another hug, “I’ve been okay for a long time. And I hope you know I love the bejeezus outta you. That’s always been true, and it will never stop being true. You capisce?”

A tiny smile changes Mary’s tear-encrusted face and she says, “I capisce. And I love you too.”


End file.
